In voting on debates, should you read what others have said while coming to your decision, or should you read only the debate without seeing how others have responded to it?

Personally, I don't think there's any problem with reading other RFDs or letting them influence your own decisions. The Supreme Court, and most any panel of judges in almost any context, usually discusses their decisions among each other. They don't decide cases, or disputes, or debates, in a vacuum. Maybe that should be the norm on DDO?

Thoughts?

If you'd like a vote on your debate, please send me a link. I'll do my best to offer a sufficient RFD in your favor.

Also: If you'd like to vote bomb a debate and need help crafting a sufficient RFD, let me know.

At 12/7/2015 5:48:15 PM, FourTrouble wrote:In voting on debates, should you read what others have said while coming to your decision, or should you read only the debate without seeing how others have responded to it?

Personally, I don't think there's any problem with reading other RFDs or letting them influence your own decisions. The Supreme Court, and most any panel of judges in almost any context, usually discusses their decisions among each other. They don't decide cases, or disputes, or debates, in a vacuum. Maybe that should be the norm on DDO?

Thoughts?

I agree with this. I forgot what particular debate it was, but there was a case when Pro plagiarized his whole argument. When I went to vote (I was going to vote pro) I realized from the prior votes that he had plagiarized, thus the source was given as well. Before reading those votes, I didn't realize that Pro had plagiarized, so I gave Con the win.

Debate is not a legal setting, and while, occasionally, some analogies are appropriate, the events should be understood in their own, separate contexts.

The purpose of rendering a legal decision is not the same as rendering a decision on a debate. Sure, both are done to decide the case, but, from there, they diverge.

In a legal setting, justices have a variety of goals: (1) political goals, (2) precedent-setting goals, (3) merits-of-the-case goals, and (4) justice goals. These are not necessarily discrete objective, and people may quibble over the wording or nature of the objections themselves. But, as I see it, these goals describe the judiciary quite accurately, but in broad strokes.

To review these points briefly, justices clearly have political agendas that influence their decisions. The differences between the Notorious RBG's decisions and Mr. Argle-Bargle are not just motivated by different honest readings of the law, but also, importantly, by ideological differences and a desire to enshrine particular ideologies and rulings that fit those ideologies in precedent so that they are harder to overturn. In other words, justices are political actors. Similarly, justices desire to set precedent, but they also are required to respect precedent, making the legal system necessarily self-referential. This creates internal stability, because we usually don't get wildly different and contradictory legal rulings from the courts, and because it allows issues to become "settled law." If each new court could revisit every precedent, there would be no consistency in our legal system. Thus, there are precedent-related goals and concerns justices face.

Then there are also the goals of respecting the actual merits of the case and the arguments. Justices should want to render rulings that actually comport with whichever side presented the better argument or had the case with more merit. This ties in too with considerations of justice, as the justices, per their namesake, should be about the administration of justice, not the imposition of their whims and fancies. Thus, justice should always consider whether they're ruling itself is just, and whether it will contribute to a just society.

Now, let's contrast this with debate. In debate, the only goals that should be considered are the last two. Why is this? Well, firstly, there is no such thing as precedent in judging debates. It's not as if my voting in favor of issue X in debate A means I am bound to also vote for issue X in debate B. Voting in debates also cannot be a political exercise if it is to maintain legitimacy. If people begin voting for their friends just to vote for their friends, or if they vote down a debate (like a religious zealot voting against gay marriage) because it doesn't comport with their personal agenda, then they deny the winner the win unfairly, and they don't actually adjudicate the debate. Instead, they impose a predetermined decisions on the debate, regardless of the debate's content.

So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, "politics" and "precedent" are issues inherently outside of the case or debate itself. These are outside mechanisms that are applied from the exterior to resolve the dispute, they are not internal to the dispute. Since both of these things are ill-advised in debates, it begins to show us why we should judge debates in a vacuum. The merits of the debate itself are internal to the debate, and justice (which in this case means rendering a fair RFD) should also lead a voter to exclude outside tools such as politics, precedent, and yes, other votes.

Other votes should be excluded because, for many voters, it precludes the need to think. If I read Bluesteel's vote, just knowing his reputation as a voter, I can conclude he probably offered a sound RFD and got the decision right. Why should I bother to even read the debate when I could just parrot his votes? Moreover, how Bluesteel and I reach decisions is very different, but, if I use elements of his logic in my RFD, even if it's not an outright copy, I cannot say that the vote I cast lacked outside bias, and I risk misunderstanding something, and I risk copying a bad RFD...because even Bluesteel can cast a bad RFD now and again.

Finally, the analogy you directly included in your RFD is inapt. Panel courts are appeals courts. In this case, the appeals are done mostly by the mods. So, more appropriate analogy would be that individual voters are single judges who evaluate the merits of the case, and render a decision, and the mods are the appeals court who internally debate the ruling of the lower court, and make a decision.

I judged a debate with Kasmic awhile ago. And some of the best debaters and voters on the site voted for BOT over Kasmic. I was the lone Kasmic voter, yet I determined that the vote I had cast was solid. Had I waited to cast my vote after the BOT torrent, it may have dissuaded me for voting for who I actually thought won. Even after the debate, I fretted about what had gone wrong in my RFD, because so many people voted opposite me. I eventually realized that nothing was wrong, per se, but rather I just saw things differently. This kind intimidation (where voters feel concerned about going against the majority) isn't intentional--intimidation may not even be the right word--but it does stifle opposing viewpoints. Now, while any debater can simply look at who voted without reading the RFDs and still get intimidated, the effect is amplified when you look at RFD after RFD that reaches an opposite conclusion to yours.

2. Loss of Diversity of Opinion

Debates and their outcomes are not objective decisions. This is a very important point to ram home: there is never a "correct" winner of a debate, unless someone concedes or totally forfeits. There is always room for legitimate disagreement.

When people read the RFDs of others, they are, naturally, tempted to incorporate elements of those RFDs in their own. Slowly, this begins to unify the language, reasoning, and decisions of the RFDs, such that the diversity of analysis is low. This is unhelpful to the debaters from a practical standpoint, because they get the same or similar analysis, with similar points of feedback. But it is also harmful to the project of voting itself, because it gives enormous weight to votes cast early on in the process or from certain influential voters, whom other voters are likely to read. This is problematic, because it is diversity-reducing. It means that different means of interpreting the debate are stifled, and could lead to uniformity in decision-making. It can also give undue weight to a few people's votes, and spare the needs for others to add much extra thought. And, finally, it means that if the early or influential votes got it wrong (I sue this term loosely, because it is subjective...but even in that framework, votes can have problematic reasoning), that error could be replicated in other votes. It is better to have many unique opinions, that assess the debate from all angles, and provide unique feedback, than to have a bunch of similar comments.

3. The Introduction of Bias

Suppose I read a vote from whiteflame about debate G before I read debate G. Whiteflame votes for debater I_Win over debater I_Suck. When I go to read the debate, I experience some kind of confirmation bias. Whiteflame has already framed the debate in my head, and I begin to see things in the way he does. I don't see them impartially, and so I cannot fairly assess the round. I am, as it were, biased. Even if I read the RFD for G after having read G, my initial impressions of the debate may change or be shaped by the way Whiteflame describes his thought process. So, in the same vein as bullet 2, voters begin to think in the same way, but here I am not complaining about a lack of diversity, rather, a lack of impartiality. If Whiteflame emphasizes argument G1 in his decision, I may find myself thinking, "yeah, G1 was a rather compelling point, when you put it like that." I lose my ability to interpret the arguments fairly, and with a clean slate.

Therefore, debater I_Suck could legitimately complain that the conditions of his loss were unfair, because he never got a fair chance to win. Because the voters were influenced by whiteflame's thinking, they may have come to see the debate in the same way whiteflame did (or at least similarly in important respects), which resulted in I_Win's victory. But, because the judges were never impartial--they had been "got at" by whiteflame's RFD--they may have overlooked good things that I_Suck did, which may have, in different conditions, produced a better result. I_Win had a built-in advantage after whiteflame's vote, because the voters had the lens of whiteflame's RFD in mind as they read the debate. That is why tabula rasa, or "in a vacuum" judging is good, because it avoids these kinds of built-in advantages cropping up.

========

I think there are more reasons to prohibit this--e.g. PR reasons (avoiding the perception of bias), teaching people not to use other's votes as crutches--but, these are the big reasons, as far as I am concerned.

At 12/7/2015 6:11:12 PM, bsh1 wrote:Other votes should be excluded because, for many voters, it precludes the need to think. If I read Bluesteel's vote, just knowing his reputation as a voter, I can conclude he probably offered a sound RFD and got the decision right. Why should I bother to even read the debate when I could just parrot his votes? Moreover, how Bluesteel and I reach decisions is very different, but, if I use elements of his logic in my RFD, even if it's not an outright copy, I cannot say that the vote I cast lacked outside bias, and I risk misunderstanding something, and I risk copying a bad RFD...because even Bluesteel can cast a bad RFD now and again.

Yes, "copying" someone else's vote precludes the need to think. That also misses the point of what I'm saying, which has nothing to do with "copying" or "not thinking." I'm talking about judging a debate as best as you possibly can. The reality is that reasonable minds often differ on the correct outcome in a debate. Yet most judges believe (or should believe) there's an objectively correct outcome about who argued better. So why do reasonable minds disagree about outcomes? Because they make mistakes, they fail to weigh something appropriately, or they unknowingly apply their own biases. For instance, I've seen bluesteel cast the wrong vote because he literally misread what someone actually wrote in the debate. But when you're able to read someone else's RFD before deciding the debate, or even afterwards to revise your decision, you'll notice where you might have got something wrong, or notice where someone else got something wrong. That helps ensure greater objectivity about the debate's outcome. It helps provide a bigger picture to the decision-making process (e.g. see Rosalie's post). And it helps eliminate cognitive errors that all judges sometimes make.

If you'd like a vote on your debate, please send me a link. I'll do my best to offer a sufficient RFD in your favor.

Also: If you'd like to vote bomb a debate and need help crafting a sufficient RFD, let me know.

At 12/7/2015 5:48:15 PM, FourTrouble wrote:In voting on debates, should you read what others have said while coming to your decision, or should you read only the debate without seeing how others have responded to it?

It depends. If reading stuff outside the debate is going to make you more likely to pronounce the outcome based on anything other than what took place in the debate, then no, you shouldn't. But I think for most people (and all competent judges), they can read any RFD and still reach an objective conclusion based only on what took place in the debate itself. This assumes that judges are competent.

Personally, I don't think there's any problem with reading other RFDs or letting them influence your own decisions. The Supreme Court, and most any panel of judges in almost any context, usually discusses their decisions among each other. They don't decide cases, or disputes, or debates, in a vacuum. Maybe that should be the norm on DDO?

Thoughts?

Many judges are incompetent. That's just a fact, and many debaters are terrible judges. To the extent that reading another's RFD to get a feel for what an RFD should contain, and thereby enabling a judge to produce a coherent RFD, the reading of other people's RFD's should be encouraged. The reason is because most people just aren't going to figure out what an RFD should contain or do on their own.

I also don't have, on a personal level, an ethical problem with judges being influenced by other judges, especially when you've got people who are trying to learn to judge. The idea that people are just going to be able to, on their own, read and accurately judge a debate is just naive and dumb. People need to be taught the skills that judging requires, and there is no way to do that other than by instruction, which implies influence. Anyone who says otherwise is just wrong... and really, grievously wrong, at that.

What a lot of people may be concerned about is the potential for one voter to influence another, in such a way that would make the influenced just an extension of the influencer. That idea only holds merit if judging is subjective (which it is not) and not objective (which it is). The problem is that there are a lot of people who just don't know how judging works... so they come up with all of these stupid ideas about "well, we've got to prevent YYW from influencing other voters" or "better try to get everyone to come to their own conclusion because it's all subjective anyway." That whole notion destroys the value of any debater's efforts, and the entire purpose and function of debate.

What matters is people getting the right answer for the right reasons. That's really the extent of it.

I judged a debate with Kasmic awhile ago. And some of the best debaters and voters on the site voted for BOT over Kasmic. I was the lone Kasmic voter, yet I determined that the vote I had cast was solid. Had I waited to cast my vote after the BOT torrent, it may have dissuaded me for voting for who I actually thought won. Even after the debate, I fretted about what had gone wrong in my RFD, because so many people voted opposite me. I eventually realized that nothing was wrong, per se, but rather I just saw things differently. This kind intimidation (where voters feel concerned about going against the majority) isn't intentional--intimidation may not even be the right word--but it does stifle opposing viewpoints. Now, while any debater can simply look at who voted without reading the RFDs and still get intimidated, the effect is amplified when you look at RFD after RFD that reaches an opposite conclusion to yours.

Wouldn't this sort of self-reflection and ensuing conviction make your RFD stronger? And isn't a stronger (i.e. more objectively correct) RFDs the ultimate goal?

2. Loss of Diversity of Opinion

Debates and their outcomes are not objective decisions. This is a very important point to ram home: there is never a "correct" winner of a debate, unless someone concedes or totally forfeits. There is always room for legitimate disagreement.

The outcomes themselves aren't objective in that humans inherently read debates from a subjective viewpoint. In effect, they're intersubjective decisions. But that doesn't mean the goal isn't to achieve or increase the objectivity of a decision (hence why intersubjective agreement matters; it's a proxy for objectivity).

When people read the RFDs of others, they are, naturally, tempted to incorporate elements of those RFDs in their own.

I completely disagree. There's no inherent temptation to reading something. I read sh!t I disagree with all the time without having any temptation to change my opinion. YYW, for instance, pretty much categorically disagrees with any RFDs that conflict with his. To say that somehow reading someone else's RFDs is inherently going to corrupt your decision-making process, or tempt you into agreeing with someone else, misunderstands the way people decide issues. Again, while the legal context isn't entirely analogous, the point is that judges can decide issues together, reason about issues together, without being tempted to agree with one another.

Slowly, this begins to unify the language, reasoning, and decisions of the RFDs, such that the diversity of analysis is low. This is unhelpful to the debaters from a practical standpoint, because they get the same or similar analysis, with similar points of feedback. But it is also harmful to the project of voting itself, because it gives enormous weight to votes cast early on in the process or from certain influential voters, whom other voters are likely to read. This is problematic, because it is diversity-reducing. It means that different means of interpreting the debate are stifled, and could lead to uniformity in decision-making. It can also give undue weight to a few people's votes, and spare the needs for others to add much extra thought. And, finally, it means that if the early or influential votes got it wrong (I sue this term loosely, because it is subjective...but even in that framework, votes can have problematic reasoning), that error could be replicated in other votes. It is better to have many unique opinions, that assess the debate from all angles, and provide unique feedback, than to have a bunch of similar comments.

3. The Introduction of Bias

Suppose I read a vote from whiteflame about debate G before I read debate G.

That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm talking about reading other RFDs before making your final decision about a debate. I agree that voters should read debates before doing anything else. Reading other RFDs before casting your own vote is totally different.

Whiteflame votes for debater I_Win over debater I_Suck. When I go to read the debate, I experience some kind of confirmation bias. Whiteflame has already framed the debate in my head, and I begin to see things in the way he does. I don't see them impartially, and so I cannot fairly assess the round. I am, as it were, biased. Even if I read the RFD for G after having read G, my initial impressions of the debate may change or be shaped by the way Whiteflame describes his thought process. So, in the same vein as bullet 2, voters begin to think in the same way, but here I am not complaining about a lack of diversity, rather, a lack of impartiality. If Whiteflame emphasizes argument G1 in his decision, I may find myself thinking, "yeah, G1 was a rather compelling point, when you put it like that." I lose my ability to interpret the arguments fairly, and with a clean slate.

If your impression changes after reading someone else's RFD, then your impression wasn't very strong to begin with, which means that change is a positive thing. It means we're getting a better RFD, because you reconsidered something that you were already on the fence about, probably in a positive way.

Therefore, debater I_Suck could legitimately complain that the conditions of his loss were unfair, because he never got a fair chance to win. Because the voters were influenced by whiteflame's thinking, they may have come to see the debate in the same way whiteflame did (or at least similarly in important respects), which resulted in I_Win's victory. But, because the judges were never impartial--they had been "got at" by whiteflame's RFD--they may have overlooked good things that I_Suck did, which may have, in different conditions, produced a better result. I_Win had a built-in advantage after whiteflame's vote, because the voters had the lens of whiteflame's RFD in mind as they read the debate. That is why tabula rasa, or "in a vacuum" judging is good, because it avoids these kinds of built-in advantages cropping up.

Reading someone else's RFD isn't going to make you "overlook" good things. You either see the good things or you don't.

I think there are more reasons to prohibit this--e.g. PR reasons (avoiding the perception of bias), teaching people not to use other's votes as crutches--but, these are the big reasons, as far as I am concerned.

I couldn't care less about the perception of bias if it leads to objectively better voting.

If you'd like a vote on your debate, please send me a link. I'll do my best to offer a sufficient RFD in your favor.

Also: If you'd like to vote bomb a debate and need help crafting a sufficient RFD, let me know.

At 12/7/2015 6:11:12 PM, bsh1 wrote:Other votes should be excluded because, for many voters, it precludes the need to think. If I read Bluesteel's vote, just knowing his reputation as a voter, I can conclude he probably offered a sound RFD and got the decision right. Why should I bother to even read the debate when I could just parrot his votes? Moreover, how Bluesteel and I reach decisions is very different, but, if I use elements of his logic in my RFD, even if it's not an outright copy, I cannot say that the vote I cast lacked outside bias, and I risk misunderstanding something, and I risk copying a bad RFD...because even Bluesteel can cast a bad RFD now and again.

Yes, "copying" someone else's vote precludes the need to think. That also misses the point of what I'm saying, which has nothing to do with "copying" or "not thinking." I'm talking about judging a debate as best as you possibly can.

This is, unfortunately, unrealistic. The OP implies that you would like to see a paradigm evolve on DDO in which people can read other people's RFDs and allow those RFDs to influence their decisions. An inevitable consequence of this is people parroting the reasoning of others, and putting in no more thought or effort into the process than it takes for them to change enough words from the original RFD to make it "their own." You cannot, in this light, reasonably restrict the discussion to people who try their best, unless you want to talk about an ideal world.

The reality is that reasonable minds often differ on the correct outcome in a debate. Yet most judges believe (or should believe) there's an objectively correct outcome about who argued better.

No, there isn't. And the mere fact that your statement here is debatable underscores the crux of the issue: there is no such thing as the objective winner of a debate, except in circumstances of forfeit or concession, and that's more by convention than by actual adjudication.

So why do reasonable minds disagree about outcomes? Because they make mistakes, they fail to weigh something appropriately, or they unknowingly apply their own biases.

This is incorrect. Reasonable people reach different outcomes because there is more than one reasonable outcome to be reached. To say that my emphasizing argument X over Y is a mistake, is to make a subjective judgement yourself, thereby negating, on face, your claim.

For instance, I've seen bluesteel cast the wrong vote because he literally misread what someone actually wrote in the debate.

Okay, so within subjectivity, reasoning can still be faulty. Syllogisms, for instance, can be actually wrong, and if I use a Syllogism to support my subjective interpretation of the round, then my vote is bad. Then it should be reported. But the fact that people do dumb stuff or make mistakes on occasion does not imply that there is an objective winner, and that all or most variations in decisions are due to mistakes.

But when you're able to read someone else's RFD before deciding the debate, or even afterwards to revise your decision, you'll notice where you might have got something wrong, or notice where someone else got something wrong.

This doesn't outweigh the harms. See my other post.

That helps ensure greater objectivity about the debate's outcome.

This is code for "greater uniformity." That is problematic for reasons I outline in my other post.

You say it is a mistake to unknowingly apply your own biases. Reading other people's RFDs biases you, often quite subtly, and frames the way you assess the round. If the above is a mistake, so is unknowingly applying the biases of others.

It helps provide a bigger picture to the decision-making process (e.g. see Rosalie's post). And it helps eliminate cognitive errors that all judges sometimes make.

It also helps apply a singular viewpoint to debating, and removes the need for people to think as hard or as much about the round as they otherwise should.

Concern over perception, also, is just stupid. A vote is correct, or it's not, and votes can be correct or incorrect. The sole issue is whether the judge got the call right, for the right reasons.

To the extent that anyone even deviates from that issue, or interjects subjective bullsh!t into the mix (e.g. "we must be concerned about the perception that people will have that others are exerting undue influence") they've already missed the mark. It's just wrong, because it's not respective of, as I said, whether the judge got the call right for the right reasons.

This whole discussion is just hilarious, and there is no reasonable argument against what I'm saying.

At 12/7/2015 5:48:15 PM, FourTrouble wrote:In voting on debates, should you read what others have said while coming to your decision, or should you read only the debate without seeing how others have responded to it?

Personally, I don't think there's any problem with reading other RFDs or letting them influence your own decisions. The Supreme Court, and most any panel of judges in almost any context, usually discusses their decisions among each other. They don't decide cases, or disputes, or debates, in a vacuum. Maybe that should be the norm on DDO?

Thoughts?

I don't think there's necessarily a problem with reading other votes before you cast yours. The difficulties are that it incentivizes a certain degree of copying, which makes those who cast their vote first a more likely determinant of the outcome of a given debate than anyone else. I know that's not the case every time, and I recognize that voters aren't allowed to directly piggyback on another vote, but there is a concern that you have one or two voters essentially deciding the outcome by way of having the most influence. That's not to say I'm against it, we I think it's still better for voters to check and make sure that they haven't missed anything important. The risk of directing votes I think is outweighed by improved efforts to ensure that each vote touches the major issues in a logical and meaningful fashion.

Yeah, agreed. Of course the moment you accept that, the notion of "external influence" isn't so meaningful anymore.

I mean in theory, tabula rasa judging is (as its name suggests) "blank slate" judging. So what that means is that a judge isn't going to let external influences guide them. That's not a bad thing, and it's what an objective vote ought to look like.

The whole theory behind tabula rasa judging is that it is objective voting, and that is because only objective voting is fair to the debaters. That's reasonable, and good, and other positive adjectives.

The problem is that judges who hold themselves out as tabula rasa judges typically take a leave of their reading comprehension ability, understanding of basic reasoning, and respect for the specific resolution being debated as well.

What typically happens with tabula rasa judging is that judges just basically say "fvck the resolution, and any knowledge of anything.... I'm just going to produce some arbitrary decision." That's just bad, wrong, and other negative adjectives.

They don't *intend* to do that, it's just the result of their efforts, because they don't know how to distinguish between a subjective and objective vote.

At 12/7/2015 5:48:15 PM, FourTrouble wrote:In voting on debates, should you read what others have said while coming to your decision, or should you read only the debate without seeing how others have responded to it?

Personally, I don't think there's any problem with reading other RFDs or letting them influence your own decisions. The Supreme Court, and most any panel of judges in almost any context, usually discusses their decisions among each other. They don't decide cases, or disputes, or debates, in a vacuum. Maybe that should be the norm on DDO?

Thoughts?

The difference between a legal setting and debate is that in the former, you are searching for the truth. In the latter, you need to go by who argued better, had better rhetorical abilities, and argued more skillfully and so on.

Voters often rephrase and put together debates in a way that wasn't done by the debater and allow readers new perspectives from which to view the debate. It is unfair to the debaters because these new perspectives weren't part of the debate to begin with. They deserve a vote based on your initial impression using only the language and rhetorical ability that they were capable of using.

I judged a debate with Kasmic awhile ago. And some of the best debaters and voters on the site voted for BOT over Kasmic. I was the lone Kasmic voter, yet I determined that the vote I had cast was solid. Had I waited to cast my vote after the BOT torrent, it may have dissuaded me for voting for who I actually thought won. Even after the debate, I fretted about what had gone wrong in my RFD, because so many people voted opposite me. I eventually realized that nothing was wrong, per se, but rather I just saw things differently. This kind intimidation (where voters feel concerned about going against the majority) isn't intentional--intimidation may not even be the right word--but it does stifle opposing viewpoints. Now, while any debater can simply look at who voted without reading the RFDs and still get intimidated, the effect is amplified when you look at RFD after RFD that reaches an opposite conclusion to yours.

Wouldn't this sort of self-reflection and ensuing conviction make your RFD stronger? And isn't a stronger (i.e. more objectively correct) RFDs the ultimate goal?

I fretted after I cast my vote, and concluded that it was fine. There was nothing to change. But, even if I had concluded a change was needed, I wouldn't have made it. But, it's nice how you didn't address the meat of the point here.

2. Loss of Diversity of Opinion

Debates and their outcomes are not objective decisions. This is a very important point to ram home: there is never a "correct" winner of a debate, unless someone concedes or totally forfeits. There is always room for legitimate disagreement.

The outcomes themselves aren't objective in that humans inherently read debates from a subjective viewpoint. In effect, they're intersubjective decisions. But that doesn't mean the goal isn't to achieve or increase the objectivity of a decision (hence why intersubjective agreement matters; it's a proxy for objectivity).

Just to momentarily blow things out of proportion: Hitler argued that there was an objective way to assess human worth (aryan, straight, etc.), and everyone else was wrong. Diversity was eliminated, and people were brought, through dogma, to the same way of thinking. You argue that there is an objective result of debates, and everyone else is mistaken. Diversity should be eliminated, and people should be brought, through consensus, to the same way of looking at things, so that the objective winner always wins.

Now, the hyperbole of the situation aside, you have to realize that what you are suggesting creates a paradigm where dissent is discouraged, and people are in fact encouraged to think alike. This is insidious in any kind of intellectually honest pursuit where room for reasonable disagreement exists.

Frankly, you cannot make a compelling case that debate results are objective, so there is no objectivity to increase, anyway.

When people read the RFDs of others, they are, naturally, tempted to incorporate elements of those RFDs in their own.

I completely disagree. There's no inherent temptation to reading something. I read sh!t I disagree with all the time without having any temptation to change my opinion. YYW, for instance, pretty much categorically disagrees with any RFDs that conflict with his.

Agreed, and that is why his analysis of others' votes isn't always the best, because disagreement with his position equates to being "objectively wrong."

That aside, however, just because you disagree with what you read does not mean it doesn't influence how you think. Moreover, you may disagree with an RFD as a totality, but agree with elements of it, and it may cause you to focus on other things. You may even have the opposite reaction. You may so vehemently disagree with a vote's emphasis on A, that you under-emphasize A. Whatever the case, it is still undue outside influence on your decision-making process.

Frankly, the goal should be to remove outside influences on a person's thought before the read a debate.

3. The Introduction of Bias

Suppose I read a vote from whiteflame about debate G before I read debate G.

That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm talking about reading other RFDs before making your final decision about a debate. I agree that voters should read debates before doing anything else. Reading other RFDs before casting your own vote is totally different.

At 12/7/2015 6:38:08 PM, bsh1 wrote:Whiteflame votes for debater I_Win over debater I_Suck. When I go to read the debate, I experience some kind of confirmation bias. Whiteflame has already framed the debate in my head, and I begin to see things in the way he does. I don't see them impartially, and so I cannot fairly assess the round. I am, as it were, biased. Even if I read the RFD for G after having read G, my initial impressions of the debate may change or be shaped by the way Whiteflame describes his thought process. So, in the same vein as bullet 2, voters begin to think in the same way, but here I am not complaining about a lack of diversity, rather, a lack of impartiality. If Whiteflame emphasizes argument G1 in his decision, I may find myself thinking, "yeah, G1 was a rather compelling point, when you put it like that." I lose my ability to interpret the arguments fairly, and with a clean slate.

If your impression changes after reading someone else's RFD, then your impression wasn't very strong to begin with, which means that change is a positive thing. It means we're getting a better RFD, because you reconsidered something that you were already on the fence about, probably in a positive way.

Not really. I've read debates where I was certain in my reading, but seeing the comments of someone else made my doubt it. This isn't progressing towards objectivity. Merely, it is the triumph of one person's subjective idea of the debate over another's equally subjective idea of the debate. The former is not even necessarily superior to the latter in any demonstrable way. It might just be better written, and thus more initially persuasive.

Therefore, debater I_Suck could legitimately complain that the conditions of his loss were unfair, because he never got a fair chance to win. Because the voters were influenced by whiteflame's thinking, they may have come to see the debate in the same way whiteflame did (or at least similarly in important respects), which resulted in I_Win's victory. But, because the judges were never impartial--they had been "got at" by whiteflame's RFD--they may have overlooked good things that I_Suck did, which may have, in different conditions, produced a better result. I_Win had a built-in advantage after whiteflame's vote, because the voters had the lens of whiteflame's RFD in mind as they read the debate. That is why tabula rasa, or "in a vacuum" judging is good, because it avoids these kinds of built-in advantages cropping up.

Reading someone else's RFD isn't going to make you "overlook" good things. You either see the good things or you don't.

Actually, it does. If I read an RFD that eviscerates a person's argument, it made be hard for me to see the positives in it, even though I may have seen them had that RFD not clouded my opinion. Essentially, this is what you're advocating: clouding the opinions of others to reach some Nietzschean Uberrfd.

I think there are more reasons to prohibit this--e.g. PR reasons (avoiding the perception of bias), teaching people not to use other's votes as crutches--but, these are the big reasons, as far as I am concerned.

I couldn't care less about the perception of bias if it leads to objectively better voting.

Perhaps, but it is an issue that one must confront practically. There is also the issue of fairness to voters. If other people can free ride on whiteflame's logic, the system is unfair to whiteflame because he has to work super hard, but everyone else can just riff off of him.

At 12/7/2015 7:12:47 PM, F-16_Fighting_Falcon wrote:Voters often rephrase and put together debates in a way that wasn't done by the debater and allow readers new perspectives from which to view the debate. It is unfair to the debaters because these new perspectives weren't part of the debate to begin with. They deserve a vote based on your initial impression using only the language and rhetorical ability that they were capable of using.

So much this.

FT, you put so much emphasis on rhetoric, hopefully this is compelling.

At 12/7/2015 7:12:47 PM, F-16_Fighting_Falcon wrote:The difference between a legal setting and debate is that in the former, you are searching for the truth. In the latter, you need to go by who argued better, had better rhetorical abilities, and argued more skillfully and so on.

There's still a search for the truth, the truth of who argued better. Either way, point is that judges should strive to achieve objectivity in their decisions, whether it's in a legal context or a debate context, and reading other RFDs might aid that process despite concerns about introducing bias.

Voters often rephrase and put together debates in a way that wasn't done by the debater and allow readers new perspectives from which to view the debate. It is unfair to the debaters because these new perspectives weren't part of the debate to begin with. They deserve a vote based on your initial impression using only the language and rhetorical ability that they were capable of using.

There's definitely something to be said for the "initial impression" a debate gives you as a proxy for objectivity, though I'm not sure it's better than a "considered impression," in which you spend time thinking about whose arguments were more persuasive, whose rebuttals were more responsive, perhaps even rereading the debate a couple times. The issue turns on what you believe is the best way to debates -- should it turn on initial impressions or on some deeper truth that emerges are reflecting and rereading the debate? The view that initial impressions are better assumes that debaters write for readers who only read debates once. But that's not necessarily the case. Many debaters write under the assumption that voters will base their decision on a considered impression of the arguments in the debate. In fact, many debaters often ask voters, at the start of their debates, to carefully consider and weigh the arguments, not merely to go with their initial impression.

If you'd like a vote on your debate, please send me a link. I'll do my best to offer a sufficient RFD in your favor.

Also: If you'd like to vote bomb a debate and need help crafting a sufficient RFD, let me know.

At 12/7/2015 7:22:51 PM, bsh1 wrote:Now, the hyperbole of the situation aside, you have to realize that what you are suggesting creates a paradigm where dissent is discouraged, and people are in fact encouraged to think alike. This is insidious in any kind of intellectually honest pursuit where room for reasonable disagreement exists.

The fact that reasonable disagreement exits is precisely why I'm not worried about copying from reading other people's RFDs. It tells me that reading someone else's RFD isn't going to change your mind about something that easily, since reasonable people disagree, but at the same time, it might help give you more insight into what the debate did well and what the debate did badly, which in turn helps you make a better decision yourself.

Frankly, you cannot make a compelling case that debate results are objective, so there is no objectivity to increase, anyway.

This depends on how you define objectivity. Debates are a human construction, so they're subjective by their very nature. But that doesn't mean we can't establish objectivity within that subjective domain. Objectivity is always institutional. In the context of debates, you achieve objective results through various procedural mechanisms, such as applying basic principles of reasoning, basic principles of evidence and justification, as well as through intersubjective agreement. That's why we say someone wins if they get five sufficient votes in their favor while their opponent only got four votes. They didn't "subjectively" win, they "objectively" won, at least in the context of DDO.

If you'd like a vote on your debate, please send me a link. I'll do my best to offer a sufficient RFD in your favor.

Also: If you'd like to vote bomb a debate and need help crafting a sufficient RFD, let me know.

At 12/7/2015 7:22:51 PM, bsh1 wrote:Now, the hyperbole of the situation aside, you have to realize that what you are suggesting creates a paradigm where dissent is discouraged, and people are in fact encouraged to think alike. This is insidious in any kind of intellectually honest pursuit where room for reasonable disagreement exists.

The fact that reasonable disagreement exits is precisely why I'm not worried about copying from reading other people's RFDs.

Room for reasonable disagreement is something your world of objectivity seeks to suppress. Take YYW's notion of "there are only correct and incorrect RFDs." How does that paradigm leave any room for reasonable disagreement? You are only write if you reach decision Z through means A, B, and C. Everyone else is incorrect. This is what you are advocating for--the elimination of subjectivity and the elimination of room for reasonable disagreement.

Frankly, you cannot make a compelling case that debate results are objective, so there is no objectivity to increase, anyway.

This depends on how you define objectivity. Debates are a human construction, so they're subjective by their very nature. But that doesn't mean we can't establish objectivity within that subjective domain.

How very Orwellian...and unappealing.

Objectivity is always institutional. In the context of debates, you achieve objective results through various procedural mechanisms, such as applying basic principles of reasoning, basic principles of evidence and justification, as well as through intersubjective agreement.

Then you, if you believe as you've said you do, that results are objective and winners are objective, that there is a right way and a wrong way to apply these methods, and there can only be one right way, so that the "Correct" result is always assured and is thus subjective. Do you not see how this severely limits diversity in judging opinions?

Obviously, you need agreement on a basic set of rules with which to adjudicate the debate, e.g. concessions = a loss, but the more you pursue the line of reasoning you do, the more insidious it becomes.

The suggestion that debaters are entitled to some sort of "first impression" reading of a debate is fairly amusing. It's like universally accepted among respected researchers of this sort of thing that people retain, on average, about 10% of what they read. (See study: http://www.tenouk.com....) The initial study that came up with that figure I could not find a free PDF of, though, so that's why this is just someone else whose citing the figure. (In the interest of full disclosure, such studies have come under fire for various reasons... people can form their own conclusions.)

The point in any event is that most people (e.g. your average readers/voters) are going to retain a fraction of what they read. So, the "first impression" lot are heralding their case as good and right... but at best, let's say that the average voter is twice as skilled as your average reader in the population... is going to retain maybe 20%. That's still a fraction. Maybe say they're three times better than the general population. Ok, well, you're still at 30%. A lot of the problem with incompetent voting is that it's based precisely on first impressions, as can be reasonably shown by the fact that most people are just bad readers. That's only like half the battle.

The next half is abstract reasoning ability, which is way over and above just reading comprehension. (You've got to be able to correctly read something before you understand it.) And usually by this point most people are just falling behind... and they're trying to put together a Franken-RFD of nonsense without ever understanding what the conceptual interrelationship of arguments is. It's like dumping a puzzle out of a box and just messing it up, while some parts kind of sort of link together but everything else is just a perfect mess. That's what most RFD's are like. They're garbage.

And that's why I just laugh (a lot) when people say that voting is subjective, or whatever. It certainly can be, but subjective judging is like taking your puzzle pieces and smashing them together with a hammer to make them fit into what you want them to fit together as, and then spraying over the whole thing with spray glue and calling that an RFD. That is not an RFD any more than what I've described is "completing a puzzle."

Legal Analogy

The refutation there has just been really, really weak... like so weak, that it's barely even worth addressing, but this is an interesting subject so I'll go ahead before I take a shower.

Here's the deal: Debaters deserve the "best" quality of vote, and some people are just better at judging than others. Bladerunner is better than Whiteflame, for example. The problem is that people just don't know what a "good" RFD is, because they don't know what a "good" RFD should do. There are some people (bladerunner) who just "get" what an RFD should do because they're that freaking smart. (Bladerunner is one of the smartest people on this site. Read any RFD he has ever written if you don't agree, and learn why you're wrong.) There are many other people who just are not, at all, that intellectually gifted (I won't name names because that would be mean... and oh my goodness we just can't have that! Might hurt someone's fee-fee's).

In that debaters deserve the "best" quality of votes, the issue then becomes "ok, well how do we get the best quality votes?" Most of us (even if we disagree with the language) pretty much intuitively understand that all votes should be objective. Some people disagree with that as a potential thing to even happen (they are wrong, though the basis for their erroneous belief is a misunderstanding of what the word "objective" means), while others demand that it must happen.

Some people think that people are not objective to the extent that they are influenced by external forces (read: other people's RFD's), and that this is "bad" because such influence corrupts the voting process. Well, the issue is that if you're even thinking, at all, about anything that is extraneous to the debate when you're producing an RFD, then you've already gone by the wayside and you're a bad judge.

But, the people who are so concerned about voter's "independence" being affected are the same people, often, who are saying that all votes are "subjective." Now, if all votes are subjective, then being influenced by an external force is just changing the nature of the subjectivity, FROM congruence with a judge's particular beliefs and ideas, TO someone else's... and, in that the vote was subjective anyway, then no real harm was done. It's just the "appearance" of harm. That "appearance" is just comically illusory.

"Everyone who disagrees with YYW is objectively wrong."

The usual response people have to that statement is "well he's just an arrogant @ss because he doesn't consider other perspectives." That's an incredibly stupid argument. There is no "alternate perspective" other than "the right one" and "the right one" is what happened in the debate. There are no "multiple plausible readings" of a debate. It's either a correct reading, or an incorrect one, and we can look to every single debate that was ever had and point to objective reasons why the outcome is what it was. Such reasons always have to do exclusively with the debaters' arguments' relative strength.

The problem is that most judges just have no freaking idea what that is; they don't even think that it's possible, which is why these are the same people who are going to argue with the right answer (and the objectively right answer) to a standardized test because that answer "didn't account" for "their perspective." It's supreme idiocy; like, perfectly supreme idiocy.

But I have no illusion that those who have deluded themselves heretofore that the idea that all votes are subjective, and that that's a good thing, will change their minds, because these people aren't capable of recognizing why they're wrong, because they don't understand what debate is or how it works no matter how entrenched in the culture of debate they may have been.

At 12/7/2015 8:15:42 PM, bsh1 wrote:Room for reasonable disagreement is something your world of objectivity seeks to suppress.

On the contrary, it seeks to provide greater justification for reasonable disagreement. I don't believe there can be reasonable disagreement when you don't even know what the other person said. The point is to interrogate that disagreement, take it into account, justify it, rather than pretend it's non-existent.

Take YYW's notion of "there are only correct and incorrect RFDs." How does that paradigm leave any room for reasonable disagreement?

YYW's notion of objectivity isn't the reason he doesn't leave room for reasonable disagreement -- it's his extremely high standard of "reasonableness" that limits "reasonable disagreement" (his standard is basically that anyone who disagrees with him is unreasonable).

You are only write if you reach decision Z through means A, B, and C. Everyone else is incorrect. This is what you are advocating for--the elimination of subjectivity and the elimination of room for reasonable disagreement.

I advocate a process that strives toward objective results via certain procedures and intersubjective agreement. Nothing about that process eliminates room for reasonable disagreement. For instance, in the recent gay marriage decision, four Supreme Court justices wrote dissenting opinions. Those opinions were reasonable disagreements with a decision that was objectively correct precisely because objectivity, in the context of constitutional interpretation, is defined as the decisions made by the Supreme Court.

If you'd like a vote on your debate, please send me a link. I'll do my best to offer a sufficient RFD in your favor.

Also: If you'd like to vote bomb a debate and need help crafting a sufficient RFD, let me know.

Take YYW's notion of "there are only correct and incorrect RFDs." How does that paradigm leave any room for reasonable disagreement?

YYW's notion of objectivity isn't the reason he doesn't leave room for reasonable disagreement -- it's his extremely high standard of "reasonableness" that limits "reasonable disagreement" (his standard is basically that anyone who disagrees with him is unreasonable).

Well of course. I mean people certainly disagree about answers to standardized test questions (e.g. SAT, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, etc.)... but there is always a right one and a number of wrong ones. And disagreement about wins and losses are pretty much analogous to that. It's not "reasonable" to think that the wrong answer is right when it's not. The problem is that so many judges out there just don't know what the right answer is, even if it's staring them in the face.

On the positive, you've got a 50% chance of getting it right... as a judge, but you've got a 0% chance of getting it right for the right reason if you can't make it past the two hurdles: (1) reading comprehension, and (2) capacity for abstract reasoning.

At 12/7/2015 8:15:42 PM, bsh1 wrote:Room for reasonable disagreement is something your world of objectivity seeks to suppress.

On the contrary, it seeks to provide greater justification for reasonable disagreement

Not really. If you have an objectively right or wrong decision, there can only be one correct result and one correct way of arriving there.

Take YYW's notion of "there are only correct and incorrect RFDs." How does that paradigm leave any room for reasonable disagreement?

YYW's notion of objectivity isn't the reason he doesn't leave room for reasonable disagreement -- it's his extremely high standard of "reasonableness" that limits "reasonable disagreement" (his standard is basically that anyone who disagrees with him is unreasonable).

And why, in his view, is anyone who disagrees with him wrong? Because they're "objectively incorrect." It is his notion of objectivity, and his firm conviction that he is the arbiter of objectiveness, that leads to this. But, objectivity nonetheless...because some actor will always have to decide what is or is not objective.

You are only write if you reach decision Z through means A, B, and C. Everyone else is incorrect. This is what you are advocating for--the elimination of subjectivity and the elimination of room for reasonable disagreement.

I advocate a process that strives toward objective results via certain procedures and intersubjective agreement. Nothing about that process eliminates room for reasonable disagreement. For instance, in the recent gay marriage decision, four Supreme Court justices wrote dissenting opinions. Those opinions were reasonable disagreements with a decision that was objectively correct precisely because objectivity, in the context of constitutional interpretation, is defined as the decisions made by the Supreme Court.

This is a different kind of objectivity--it's the discussion of whether RFDs are objectively right or wrong that is insidious.

At 12/7/2015 8:41:17 PM, bsh1 wrote:Not really. If you have an objectively right or wrong decision, there can only be one correct result and one correct way of arriving there.

Just because you have an objectively correct result doesn't mean you have an independent mechanism for determining what that result is. That leads to reasonable disagreements (again, see any 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court, as an example of reasonable disagreements).

This is a different kind of objectivity--it's the discussion of whether RFDs are objectively right or wrong that is insidious.

No. There's nothing wrong with discussing whether an RFD is objectively right or wrong. That's what everyone should be doing. The goal is to figure out what the right result is, which sometimes requires discussing disagreements, since there's no independent mechanism for deciding who is right or wrong.

If you'd like a vote on your debate, please send me a link. I'll do my best to offer a sufficient RFD in your favor.

Also: If you'd like to vote bomb a debate and need help crafting a sufficient RFD, let me know.

At 12/7/2015 8:38:01 PM, YYW wrote:Well of course. I mean people certainly disagree about answers to standardized test questions (e.g. SAT, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, etc.)... but there is always a right one and a number of wrong ones. And disagreement about wins and losses are pretty much analogous to that. It's not "reasonable" to think that the wrong answer is right when it's not. The problem is that so many judges out there just don't know what the right answer is, even if it's staring them in the face.

It's analogous in that there's a right answer. But it's distinguishable in that the right answer isn't as obvious as it is on standardized tests, hence why reasonable disagreement over what the right answer is actually makes sense in the context of an RFD.

If you'd like a vote on your debate, please send me a link. I'll do my best to offer a sufficient RFD in your favor.

Also: If you'd like to vote bomb a debate and need help crafting a sufficient RFD, let me know.